Dusk sank over the valley in slow, violet layers. Torches flared along the road as the caravan rolled to a halt before a pine trunk wider than a wagon wheel. Men swore. Axes rang dull against thick bark. Teamsters tugged at reins while beasts tossed their heads and stamped.
They weren't moving that tree tonight.
From the reeds, Rowan watched the chaos gather in the perfect place. The river ran cold around his calves. He set his harpoon across his palms and let a thin skin of water crawl the prongs, then stilled it. Not yet.
Exactly where we wanted you.
---
At the funnel's mouth, five men stood shoulder to shoulder. Brennar. Toren. The scarred veteran. The younger survivor with fire in his eyes. The broad-shouldered silent one. All waiting for the signal.
The torchlight painted their faces gold and shadow. The smell of pitch and sweat drifted on the air.
Brennar rolled his shoulders, axe resting against one thigh. He grinned sharp but his eyes softened for just a heartbeat. "You've all got families. Or you did. So fight like every swing means they're watching. That's how I do it."
The scarred veteran spat once into the dirt. "My boy was in one of those cages. If he ain't now, I'll fight for the ones still breathing."
The younger man's jaw tightened. "I've lost too much already. I'm not losing this."
The broad-shouldered one only shifted his grip and knocked his sword twice against his shield. His silence was heavier than words.
Toren's hands shook on the hilt. He swallowed and looked at Brennar. "If I fall—"
Brennar cut him off with a growl. "Then I'll drag your sorry hide back up. We're one line. Nobody breaks. Nobody stands alone."
Rowan, from the river, caught their faces in the flickering light. For a moment, they didn't look like outcasts and survivors. They looked like a wall—built of scars, fear, anger, and stubbornness. And for a moment, he believed they could hold back an army.
Brennar bared his teeth. "Let's show them."
---
Brennar didn't wait for speeches. He burst from the brush with a roar that split the torchlight, axe high and wild. His swing smashed a sentry's shield in half and sent the man spinning. Shouts cracked across the camp as heads snapped his way.
"Now!" he barked. "Make the lane!"
---
Ashwyn's staff hit the earth with a heavy thud. Roots and brambles answered at once. Not a wall—a throat. Angled ribs of wood punched up along the road, biting in from both sides to make a narrow corridor where the felled tree choked the path. Thorned vines stitched the gaps. Ditches thickened with snagging scrub.
"One path in," he murmured, steady. "One path out."
---
Rowan raised his palm. A thin sheet of river slid forward and froze across the mud at the mouth of Ashwyn's funnel—clear as glass, vicious as a trick. The cold gnawed his skin. He held the glaze smooth and even, then let the rest of the water fall still.
The trap was set.
---
"Hold!" Brennar snapped, stepping into the choke as raiders rushed. Toren slid in at his shoulder; the three freed swordsmen locked beside them, shields overlapping—scarred veteran on the right, broad-shouldered man in the middle, the younger one on Toren's left. Five blades. One line.
The first rank hit the ice at a run. Boots flew. Men pinwheeled and crashed into the backs of their own. The second rank smashed into them, then the third, jamming the throat with bodies and wood and iron.
Brennar's axe rose and fell in short, ugly strokes. "Short cuts! Feet under!" he barked between blows.
Toren's parry rang too high but turned a blade anyway. The younger survivor stabbed under his guard, quick and sure. The scarred man slammed a shield edge into a nose with a crunch. The broad-shouldered one hooked an ankle and kicked. A man went down and vanished under the press.
Rowan did nothing but keep the ice slick and perfect. He let the line do its work.
Steel flashed. Bodies slipped and slammed. The funnel drank them.
---
Men tried to cheat the sides. He felt them through his palms—light, quick, hunting for an edge. He fed the thorns there, let bramble catch greaves and tug hard. One raider tripped and tumbled into the ditch with a curse. Another tore free, slower now—slow enough for a slice of shadow to glide behind him and lay his throat open without a sound.
Ashwyn didn't look. The night had its own hunters.
Roots bled sap where axes bit. He pressed the ribs deeper, set fresh growth across any hole in the fence as soon as it opened.
"Hold," he told the earth. "Only until the cages are empty."
---
The weight came, and kept coming. Toren's arm burned. He planted his feet like Brennar had drilled into him—knees soft, hips square, shield tight—and let the force roll through his frame instead of knocking him flat. A big man slammed him with a shield; Toren met it and shoved back. The broad-shouldered survivor stabbed low. Gone.
"Good," Brennar barked. "That's a stance."
A wolf lunged somehow through the mess—chain snapping, teeth white. Toren screamed without meaning to and dropped his shield rim into its jaws. "Under!" Brennar shouted. Toren shoved; the broad-shouldered man stabbed; the scarred veteran booted the snout. The wolf folded, slid, and vanished under boots and thorns.
Toren's breath tore at his throat. He lifted his blade again anyway.
They held.
---
Numbers hit the choke again and again until the line's rhythm locked: catch, shove, cut, step. The ice turned the front into a slaughterhouse floor. Men slipped into steel. Those who kept their feet found root and thorn at the edge of their stride. The funnel's mouth clogged and ground in place.
The raiders tried to brace and press—a wall of shield against a wall of shield. The fight stalled into a heaving knot of wood and iron.
Rowan moved.
---
He didn't step into the choke. He lifted the river.
A curtain of water arced high out of the dark and crashed onto the rear ranks, flattening three rows at once and sweeping them sideways into the thorns. To the raiders it looked like the river itself had risen to strike. Men shouted in panic:
"What sorcery—"
"The river fights us!"
"Hold the line!"
Rowan pulled again, sharper. The water tightened in the air into long, pale spikes and fell like a volley of siege bolts. Shields shattered. Helmets rang. Knees buckled. He let the ice melt as soon as it hit so the proof vanished into mud and steam.
He lifted spray into a rolling fog that spilled over the choke and crawled into the rear. Men coughed and wheezed, half-blind, swinging wide at ghosts.
From the line, Brennar laughed once, bloody and delighted. "Who's drowning now?"
"Hold," Rowan said to the river, and it held.
---
Beyond the throat, the camp shifted shape—wagons bumped and settled, orders flew, beasts balked.
Rowan pulled again, thickening the fog until the rear of the camp vanished in pale mist.
And in that cover, unseen, Ari, Lyra, and Tamsin slipped to the cages. Iron hinges squealed faintly as the first lock clicked open.
"Only a little longer," Ashwyn told the roots, his voice low.
A deeper horn answered from within the camp—an ugly, heavy sound. Chains clanked. Wolves howled.
Brennar spat blood and grinned through it. "Let it come."
Toren lifted his sword, Readying himself for what's to come